My 5 year old dell is starting to show its age and I am thinking at buying a new box.I could build myself but could buy a pre-made setup (think PBTech, Playtech, etc.)

These days, I mostly use that box for Photo Editing (Lightroom + Photoshop) and then just emails + facebook, etc...

Should I be looking at i7's or are i5 systems sufficent?Should I get a dedicated graphics card or would the integrated one be enough? Without dedicated graphics card, could I take advantage of the GPU enhancements in photoshop?

What about RAM, should I go for 8GB or 16GB?

Feel free to suggest any components you think would be a good idea as it is still early and am open to anything

i5 would be fine, also another thing to look at is SSD (solid state storage)256GB or more for that. The 8GB of ram should be fine depending how many photos you're editing at one time, but if you get a custom built PC you should be able to easily upgrade if you find 8GB isnt meeting your needs.

Thanks for that, I'll look at the i5's more closely.Forgot to mention: I do have a 120GB SSD that I can reuse.

Regarding the SSD: Are we saying you get even more benefit by having the photos you are editing on the SSD as well? Cause the 120GB SSD doesn't really allow for that and perhaps I am not getting all the benefits

I5-I7, 8 gigs or more RAM, Dont skimp on the power supply at all. Decent motherboard. $200 or more on graphics card. 2tb green for storage, 256GB SSD for OS and some games. Dont spend money on a case, maybe 150 tops.

You forgot a power supply, best not rely on the built in ones they sell in the cheaper boxes [IMO]

What are you reusing? You mentioned the 120SSD, but will need something more for the bulk data storage too.Are you happy with your current monitor [DVI at a minimum, HDMI is better] VGA is often not supported anymore (didn't look up the specific mobo)

I'd also check your cd/DVD drive is SATA as PATA is a PITA to deal with these days too...

You forgot a power supply, best not rely on the built in ones they sell in the cheaper boxes [IMO]

What are you reusing? You mentioned the 120SSD, but will need something more for the bulk data storage too.Are you happy with your current monitor [DVI at a minimum, HDMI is better] VGA is often not supported anymore (didn't look up the specific mobo)

I'd also check your cd/DVD drive is SATA as PATA is a PITA to deal with these days too...

Just my 2c :D

The OP already has a power supply.

And, generally no need for DVD in a modern system although people with particular use cases might like to retain them.

You forgot a power supply, best not rely on the built in ones they sell in the cheaper boxes [IMO]

What are you reusing? You mentioned the 120SSD, but will need something more for the bulk data storage too.Are you happy with your current monitor [DVI at a minimum, HDMI is better] VGA is often not supported anymore (didn't look up the specific mobo)

I'd also check your cd/DVD drive is SATA as PATA is a PITA to deal with these days too...

Just my 2c :D

The OP already has a power supply.

And, generally no need for DVD in a modern system although people with particular use cases might like to retain them.

589 looks like a sharp price too.

Fair enough call on the DVD, though he WAS asking what he might have forgotten, but a five year old 'dell' powersupply in a new system is jus asking for trouble... PSU age year by year losing efficiency, and Dell are notorious for supplying the minimum PSU for the system as it's sold.

FWIW I will always prioritise the PSU over any periphery, if it goes, it normally takes the Mobo, ram, and PSU with it... Beside the weeks before when your system locks and reboots and you have no idea why.....

TimA: I5-I7, 8 gigs or more RAM, Don't skimp on the power supply at all. Decent motherboard. $200 or more on graphics card. 2tb green for storage, 256GB SSD for OS and some games. Dont spend money on a case, maybe 150 tops.

I know a bit about this, professional photographer and IT guy who's looked into it. I process up to 100,000 photos a year.

For image editing a graphics card is unnecessary. A small number of programs accelerate a small number of operations, but it's very small and not worth it IMHO. The video subsystem in the new i5/i7 processors is definitely up to the job for LR/Photoshop. I personally buy the cheapest nVidia graphics card just so it's not taking bandwidth from my RAM.

120GB SSD is plenty. Put your OS, programs, cache, and catalog on there, put your images onto a spinning disk. Make sure the catalog is backed up nightly, when SSDs fail they do it suddenly.

i5 is fine, i7 is a bit faster for exporting batches but not much interactively.

16GB of RAM is good mostly so you get a big disk cache. The OS and programs use about 6-8GB, so that gives you 8GB cache. If you want to edit at very high speed just have enough RAM for your working set of images. RAM's cheap.